- Game Versions
- Smash 3DS, Smash Wii U
Alabama Sweet Knee: A captain Falcon Guide by TimeoftheMonthman (T.M.)
This guide is a work in progress. I’ve written enough that I think its worth posting, and I’m going to be adding more as time goes on. Any comments/ opions, videos disproving anything I’ve said are more than welcome in the comments, and greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading.
Key:
Vectoring: Probably the most important skill for any player to master in smash 4. Basically, when you get hit you have to predict the direction your character is going to be sent flying in. If you push your movement stick in the opposide direction you're flying in (so if you get launched DIRECTLY up, press down) you wont fly as far in that direction. This is very different from DI because DI from the old games let you influence yourself in whatever direction you where sent flying in, so if you got sent left and you pressed up or down, you'd start flying left and up a bit.
Vectoring is different because if you get sent in a direction you can only influence yourself by pushing your movement stick one of two ways: further in the direction you've been sent flying (which is useful because it can prevent your opponent from getting close enough to hit you with a follow up). You can also influence yourself in the opposite direction from the one you where sent flying. This is useful because it can frequently keep you from dying. React properly when you're knocked back with the right vectoring every time, and you can make each life last significantly longer, making you a much more deadly opponent.
DI: Directional influence: Pushing the movement stick in a specific direction to influence an airborne character’s movement. Most helpful when you've been knocked back hard. Push your movement stick in the opposite direction you've been sent to try and slow your momentum. Sometimes DI'ing perpendicular to your momentum is also helpful.
Dair :Down A in the air
Fair: Forward A in the air
Bair: Back A in the air
Uair: Up A in the air
Sweet Knee: Captain falcon’s Fair landed with perfect timing. His most important move. Critically different from the flub Knee. When you use the knee there will be a shiny part on the tip of captain falcon's knee that represents the sweet spot. To use this move correctly you have to press A and make the sweet spot touch your opponent.
Flub Knee: Captain falcon’s forward air without the sweet spot. If you throw out the knee and hit your opponent after the shiny part goes away, you'll perform a flub knee.
Maybe there’s already enough captain falcon guides up on the boards already, but I figured what the heck, I’ll give it a shot. Victra is probably a 200 times better player than I am, who seems to know a LOT about the character, so check his guide and videos on youtube (which are super helpful) in tandem with this and others. I mained captain falcon in melee, project M, and again in smash 4. I don’t really like him in brawl because he wasn’t very good, and the physics of the game don’t really lend themselves to great falconing, or at least not my style of falcon, so I play wario in brawl.
3ds vs Wii u:
I’m going to be writing this guide mainly for Wii U, but almost everything I’m saying caries seamlessly between both versions. If you really really want to be a competitive player you should try and get the Wii U version, because it’s the (I use this term loosely) “Definitive” version of the game.
Getting Good (the only thing I really care about):
If you really want to get good with captain falcon (or advance as a player in general), you should stop playing matches on for glory, and stop playing the computer (with the exception of training mode, which is great). The only matchmaking service I know of besides asking for training partners on smashboards or reddit, is “Anthers ladder”: www.smashladder.com . Unless you’re already a great player, chances are if you go on this website, and search for a RANKED match (either best 2 out of 3 or best 3 out of 5), you’ll get your teeth kicked in consistently until you become much better at the game. I feel somewhat bad for taking web traffic away from smash boards by posting this, but honestly, as far as match making in smash 4 is concerned, nothing I’ve seen comes close to smashladder for skill of players, which is what you should be going for if you’re trying to git guud at smash brothers, and honestly, thats what we’re all here for.
Other people have already talked about his movesets, general strategies, some combos, and those are really informative, you should check them out if you have any real interest in Doug.
What I’ll be focusing on is matchups and general falcon strategy.
First I’d like to cover general Falcon technique, then I’ll go into specifics of each of the characters in alphabetical order.
General Falcon Technique:
There’s already a guide or two about this out there, but I think I’ve got some unique info to add on this front.
Space-Baiting:
Captain falcon’s 4 main assets are his speed, his grab, his gentleman, and his knee. You can run in and attack, but most good players will see that coming, and they’ll punish you for it, and believe me, other characters have a lot of opportunity to punish Falcon’s approach, mostly anyone with a projectile (so 41 of the 52characters (i’m counting each mii as it’s own character, and including mewtwo).
There’s basically two ways to properly bait out the opportunity to get a free hit on your opponent is to either dash dance outside of their range, waiting for them to make a mistake, and the 2nd is to rush in, then fake out: Don’t attack, don’t get too close, just get close to them and stay just outside their range. The real skill of your falconing comes in when you know your opponents attacks better than they do, so they’ll try to hit you, and you rush in with a grab or a tackle and punish.
What your goal with captain falcon should be is to either be approaching with an attack (or grab), or running up and faking them out by not attacking. Sometimes running up and not attacking will provoke a response from your opponent that lets you reply to that attack with an even more powerful attack than the one you would have originally been trying to hit with them, mainly the knee. This is one great example of such a situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGMG8HFHXT4
Other attacks that work well with space baiting are the elbow (Side-smash), down tilt (huge reach on this attack), and the gentleman (more on the gentleman later, but essentially, if you use it properly, it controls the space of the fight, and thus the mind of your opponent. Possibly one of captain falcons best moves).
Arial game:
Captain falcon was meant to be played in the air. The most important thing for you to know as a captain falcon player is how to set up and kill your opponent in the air. Some good setups are:
- Running tackle: Pops up your opponent, at most percents (especially low percents) this can be followed up by u-air, u-air. If space baited properly you can land a sweet
Combos: Some of these combos are situational, others are guaranteed:
Tackle, uair, uair:
The best and most essential captain falcon combo because it's fast, easy to do, and reliable with a lot of characters at a lot of percents.
Sweet Knee: The trick to hitting people with the sweet knee is a lot of training mode. It’s probably one of, if not the most difficult move to hit in the entire game (the only thing i can think of off the top of my head that might be more difficult is meta knight’s down b teleport slash, but that move isn’t nearly as useful).
Ground Game:
Most of the time when I’m fighting on the ground I’m trying to trick my opponent with the above strategies, or some of the following. Captain falcon’s grab has two (possibly more, but I don’t think so) ranges. The first range is his standing still grab range, it has a short range that really only gets someone thats well within jab range. This is an ok move, but it’s really only a useful attack if you’re sure the opponent is going to block. The better option if you’re standing right next to the opponent is to use the combo Neutral A, Neutral A, Neutral A. You have to tap it separately 3 times. If you mash on the A button falcon will enter a flurry of punches, which is generally a not so great move. Sometimes falcon’s jab flurry can be good on a low % opponent, but the gentleman is more useful because it pushes the opponent away, which can be great for mixing them up and getting into their head. Practice the gentleman a lot, because if you get nervous in a competitive match you’re going to consistently make the mistake of mashing a, which isn’t nearly as good as a consistent gentleman.
Most of captain falcon's ground moves have either decent kill potential, or decent setup potential.
Moves you'll want to use when your opponent is low %, to rack up damage:
Running A, the tackle:
This position's your oppnent up, above, and a little bit away from captain falcon. This is a good situation for captain falcon because he can run, jump up, and use one of his many good arials. Overall, a great move.
Like all smash, your ground game is based on predicting what the opponent is going to do next. If you rush in and tackle a blocking opponent you’re going to get punished. If you think the opponent is going to block, your best option is a running grab, because of its extremely large range.
Other good approach options (besides grab and tackle) are to rush in, stop pushing the movement stick and slide in, then gentleman. This is tricky, but it’s really good for edgeguarding.
Competitive play:
In smash 4, the general consensus for rules seems to be the following:
Best 2 out of 3 matches (probably best 3 of 5 matches in tournament finals)
Wii U: Both players rock paper scissors for first pick. Then, who ever won the pick gets to ban two of the following:
Starter stages: Battlefield, Final destination, Duck hunt (non-omega), Lylat Cruise, Smashville. Then, the looser of the rock/paper/scissors picks one of the remaining stages.
Then, for rounds 2-5 the winner of the last round bans 2 of the following:
Counterpicks: All the previously mentioned stages PLUS skyloft, Town and city, wuhu island, castle siege, delphino plaza, Halberd
3ds:
Starter stages: Battlefield, Final destination, yoshi’s island
Counterpicks: Arena Pherox, Prism tower
Final note about competitive stages:
If you really want to be as good as possible at smash 4, you should be practicing 1v1 3 stock on these stages. Understand what advantages and disadvantages YOUR captain falcon has on each, because it could be different from player to player, I haven’t met enough other Falcon mains to determine what stages are universally good for the character. Stages with platforms are your friend because they provoke more arial play from both players, and Falcon does best in the air, over the ledge. Practice your timing, recover, and most importantly fighting over the ledge. A lot of matches can be won by hitting someone into the stage because if they don’t tech it properly they’ll bounce of at mid to high percent and die almost instantly. Captain falcon’s best stages (generally) are battlefield and lylat cruise.
Match-up Guide
Bowser:
The right Bowser can be a really tough matchup for Captain Falcon. Most Bowsers, however, are just a big punching bag. The gentleman, Falcon’s 3 hit neutral A combo is very good against bowser, except when bowser has super armor, so if he looks like he’s crouching, you should back off. Don’t roll away every time, because if you do anything too consistently with captain falcon, you’re going to get punished.
Bowser’s down tilt, side tilt, and neutral a jab combo come out really fast, and can sometimes win the priority/timing fight with captain falcon’s gentleman
You also want to watch yourself if he’s ever got one stock up on you and you’re on your last stock, because any decent bowser player is going to look for an opening for flying slam (bowser’s side b where he flips you up and usually throws both of you off the stage into death). Bowser kills himself first, but it doesn't matter if he's got one more than you. Sometimes he'll try this if you're both tied up in stock and he's got a lot more % than you.
But, if he tries it, its worth it to push yourself back towards the stage if you have less percentage, because the character with less percentage controlls the movement during this attack
Bowser will also try and fire breath you off the ledge, the best response to this is usually to spam up b, because you can’t grab the ledge while its covered in fire, and yeah, you’re going to take more damage from hitting that fire over and over, but it’s better than dying. Just spam up b until the fire breath runs out, and use your judgement to either land behind bowser, or attack him from above. If you attack him from above, Dair is going to do some damage, but it’ll usually leave open if you miss the attack and land on the ground too soon.
Bowser’s best move is probably his Fair. It comes out really fast, it does a lot of damage and knocks you back really far, and its hard to punish for most characters. The best way to deal with this move is to rush in, get close to bowser to try and bait him out into using it, then DI back towards bowser and hit him either with a sweet knee or a uair, or something else depending on the situation.
Bowser Jr.
Bowser Jr is my secondary. Bowser jr's main advantage over c fal is his litany of projectiles. You can pick up the toy koopa (bowser jr's down b, the little wind up toy that explodes if it hits you). Don't forget that bowser jr can pick up and throw it at you, and you can pick up and throw it at him. Understanding this is the key to the bowser jr matchup because it's bowser jr's best spacing tool, and he can use it to trap you in a lot of unfavorable situations then punish you. Watch out for bowser jr when he's out of the klown car because his hammer attack has a lot knockback and can easily kill you at about 140-150 percent. Bowser jr can also kill you with his uair hammer attack, so watch yourself when he's underneath you. He'll probably play a mixture of really aggressive then hold back a lot, trying to goad you into attacking when you shouldn't.
Captain falcon:
Captain falcon is fast. He's the 3rd fastest character in the game, behind Sonic and Shulk's speed monado. Your ground game, most importantly the gentleman, is half of what you need to beat captain falcon. Captain falcon will spend a lot of time fighting in the air, so thats probably what you should be focusing on. The best ways for one falcon to gimp another (Kill him as he's coming back on the stage) are to running jump off the stage as he's approaching the ledge, and Down Air spike him. If captain falcon's 2nd jump doesn't snap him to the ledge, or get him back onto the stage outright, then he's going to be forced to use falcon dive (Up B). The key to killing him in this situation is to read before he uses his 2nd jump if that jump will make it back to the stage or the ledge.
Because of this, you need to run to the edge of the stage, jump up, and hit them with the Dair before their up b animation starts, or to hit him during the animation, but without getting caught in the hitbox of his up b grabbing animation, which is difficult, but possible.
The following situation assumes your opponent is off stage right, and you're on stage left:
Try to aim your boot centered over captain falcon's head and slightly to the right. Only go juuust to the right of the center, so that you'll avoid his grab animation, but don't go too far right because this will send him up and left, which will probably just save him.
Obviously you can't follow what I'm about to say all the time because that would make you predictable and get you killed. Other times when you can't do this, you should be trying to stand on the very edge of the stage, waiting for captain falcon to get close to the ledge.
Picture the following for uptilt: Captain falcon is facing right. His uptilt covers a 180 degree radius, let's call the top of CFal's head 0 degrees, and the bottom of his feet 180. If you hit your opponent while they're in the air at any point during this half circle, they'll be shot down with what's known as a "meteor effect". This is when a character is shot down, and at about 50% it becomes deadly with most characters. Anything past 70% it's pretty safe to say most of the time that they're automatically dead, except maybe the villager.
Honestly Genteleman, Dair, Uptilt spike, and knee are your most useful Captain Killing moves. The rest of his moves (When combined with the combo: running A, uptilt, uptilt) are basically just mixups that you'll have to use so you don't become predictable.
This guide is a work in progress. I’ve written enough that I think its worth posting, and I’m going to be adding more as time goes on. Any comments/ opions, videos disproving anything I’ve said are more than welcome in the comments, and greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading.
Key:
Vectoring: Probably the most important skill for any player to master in smash 4. Basically, when you get hit you have to predict the direction your character is going to be sent flying in. If you push your movement stick in the opposide direction you're flying in (so if you get launched DIRECTLY up, press down) you wont fly as far in that direction. This is very different from DI because DI from the old games let you influence yourself in whatever direction you where sent flying in, so if you got sent left and you pressed up or down, you'd start flying left and up a bit.
Vectoring is different because if you get sent in a direction you can only influence yourself by pushing your movement stick one of two ways: further in the direction you've been sent flying (which is useful because it can prevent your opponent from getting close enough to hit you with a follow up). You can also influence yourself in the opposite direction from the one you where sent flying. This is useful because it can frequently keep you from dying. React properly when you're knocked back with the right vectoring every time, and you can make each life last significantly longer, making you a much more deadly opponent.
DI: Directional influence: Pushing the movement stick in a specific direction to influence an airborne character’s movement. Most helpful when you've been knocked back hard. Push your movement stick in the opposite direction you've been sent to try and slow your momentum. Sometimes DI'ing perpendicular to your momentum is also helpful.
Dair :Down A in the air
Fair: Forward A in the air
Bair: Back A in the air
Uair: Up A in the air
Sweet Knee: Captain falcon’s Fair landed with perfect timing. His most important move. Critically different from the flub Knee. When you use the knee there will be a shiny part on the tip of captain falcon's knee that represents the sweet spot. To use this move correctly you have to press A and make the sweet spot touch your opponent.
Flub Knee: Captain falcon’s forward air without the sweet spot. If you throw out the knee and hit your opponent after the shiny part goes away, you'll perform a flub knee.
Maybe there’s already enough captain falcon guides up on the boards already, but I figured what the heck, I’ll give it a shot. Victra is probably a 200 times better player than I am, who seems to know a LOT about the character, so check his guide and videos on youtube (which are super helpful) in tandem with this and others. I mained captain falcon in melee, project M, and again in smash 4. I don’t really like him in brawl because he wasn’t very good, and the physics of the game don’t really lend themselves to great falconing, or at least not my style of falcon, so I play wario in brawl.
3ds vs Wii u:
I’m going to be writing this guide mainly for Wii U, but almost everything I’m saying caries seamlessly between both versions. If you really really want to be a competitive player you should try and get the Wii U version, because it’s the (I use this term loosely) “Definitive” version of the game.
Getting Good (the only thing I really care about):
If you really want to get good with captain falcon (or advance as a player in general), you should stop playing matches on for glory, and stop playing the computer (with the exception of training mode, which is great). The only matchmaking service I know of besides asking for training partners on smashboards or reddit, is “Anthers ladder”: www.smashladder.com . Unless you’re already a great player, chances are if you go on this website, and search for a RANKED match (either best 2 out of 3 or best 3 out of 5), you’ll get your teeth kicked in consistently until you become much better at the game. I feel somewhat bad for taking web traffic away from smash boards by posting this, but honestly, as far as match making in smash 4 is concerned, nothing I’ve seen comes close to smashladder for skill of players, which is what you should be going for if you’re trying to git guud at smash brothers, and honestly, thats what we’re all here for.
Other people have already talked about his movesets, general strategies, some combos, and those are really informative, you should check them out if you have any real interest in Doug.
What I’ll be focusing on is matchups and general falcon strategy.
First I’d like to cover general Falcon technique, then I’ll go into specifics of each of the characters in alphabetical order.
General Falcon Technique:
There’s already a guide or two about this out there, but I think I’ve got some unique info to add on this front.
Space-Baiting:
Captain falcon’s 4 main assets are his speed, his grab, his gentleman, and his knee. You can run in and attack, but most good players will see that coming, and they’ll punish you for it, and believe me, other characters have a lot of opportunity to punish Falcon’s approach, mostly anyone with a projectile (so 41 of the 52characters (i’m counting each mii as it’s own character, and including mewtwo).
There’s basically two ways to properly bait out the opportunity to get a free hit on your opponent is to either dash dance outside of their range, waiting for them to make a mistake, and the 2nd is to rush in, then fake out: Don’t attack, don’t get too close, just get close to them and stay just outside their range. The real skill of your falconing comes in when you know your opponents attacks better than they do, so they’ll try to hit you, and you rush in with a grab or a tackle and punish.
What your goal with captain falcon should be is to either be approaching with an attack (or grab), or running up and faking them out by not attacking. Sometimes running up and not attacking will provoke a response from your opponent that lets you reply to that attack with an even more powerful attack than the one you would have originally been trying to hit with them, mainly the knee. This is one great example of such a situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGMG8HFHXT4
Other attacks that work well with space baiting are the elbow (Side-smash), down tilt (huge reach on this attack), and the gentleman (more on the gentleman later, but essentially, if you use it properly, it controls the space of the fight, and thus the mind of your opponent. Possibly one of captain falcons best moves).
Arial game:
Captain falcon was meant to be played in the air. The most important thing for you to know as a captain falcon player is how to set up and kill your opponent in the air. Some good setups are:
- Running tackle: Pops up your opponent, at most percents (especially low percents) this can be followed up by u-air, u-air. If space baited properly you can land a sweet
Combos: Some of these combos are situational, others are guaranteed:
Tackle, uair, uair:
The best and most essential captain falcon combo because it's fast, easy to do, and reliable with a lot of characters at a lot of percents.
Sweet Knee: The trick to hitting people with the sweet knee is a lot of training mode. It’s probably one of, if not the most difficult move to hit in the entire game (the only thing i can think of off the top of my head that might be more difficult is meta knight’s down b teleport slash, but that move isn’t nearly as useful).
Ground Game:
Most of the time when I’m fighting on the ground I’m trying to trick my opponent with the above strategies, or some of the following. Captain falcon’s grab has two (possibly more, but I don’t think so) ranges. The first range is his standing still grab range, it has a short range that really only gets someone thats well within jab range. This is an ok move, but it’s really only a useful attack if you’re sure the opponent is going to block. The better option if you’re standing right next to the opponent is to use the combo Neutral A, Neutral A, Neutral A. You have to tap it separately 3 times. If you mash on the A button falcon will enter a flurry of punches, which is generally a not so great move. Sometimes falcon’s jab flurry can be good on a low % opponent, but the gentleman is more useful because it pushes the opponent away, which can be great for mixing them up and getting into their head. Practice the gentleman a lot, because if you get nervous in a competitive match you’re going to consistently make the mistake of mashing a, which isn’t nearly as good as a consistent gentleman.
Most of captain falcon's ground moves have either decent kill potential, or decent setup potential.
Moves you'll want to use when your opponent is low %, to rack up damage:
Running A, the tackle:
This position's your oppnent up, above, and a little bit away from captain falcon. This is a good situation for captain falcon because he can run, jump up, and use one of his many good arials. Overall, a great move.
Like all smash, your ground game is based on predicting what the opponent is going to do next. If you rush in and tackle a blocking opponent you’re going to get punished. If you think the opponent is going to block, your best option is a running grab, because of its extremely large range.
Other good approach options (besides grab and tackle) are to rush in, stop pushing the movement stick and slide in, then gentleman. This is tricky, but it’s really good for edgeguarding.
Competitive play:
In smash 4, the general consensus for rules seems to be the following:
Best 2 out of 3 matches (probably best 3 of 5 matches in tournament finals)
Wii U: Both players rock paper scissors for first pick. Then, who ever won the pick gets to ban two of the following:
Starter stages: Battlefield, Final destination, Duck hunt (non-omega), Lylat Cruise, Smashville. Then, the looser of the rock/paper/scissors picks one of the remaining stages.
Then, for rounds 2-5 the winner of the last round bans 2 of the following:
Counterpicks: All the previously mentioned stages PLUS skyloft, Town and city, wuhu island, castle siege, delphino plaza, Halberd
3ds:
Starter stages: Battlefield, Final destination, yoshi’s island
Counterpicks: Arena Pherox, Prism tower
Final note about competitive stages:
If you really want to be as good as possible at smash 4, you should be practicing 1v1 3 stock on these stages. Understand what advantages and disadvantages YOUR captain falcon has on each, because it could be different from player to player, I haven’t met enough other Falcon mains to determine what stages are universally good for the character. Stages with platforms are your friend because they provoke more arial play from both players, and Falcon does best in the air, over the ledge. Practice your timing, recover, and most importantly fighting over the ledge. A lot of matches can be won by hitting someone into the stage because if they don’t tech it properly they’ll bounce of at mid to high percent and die almost instantly. Captain falcon’s best stages (generally) are battlefield and lylat cruise.
Match-up Guide
Bowser:
The right Bowser can be a really tough matchup for Captain Falcon. Most Bowsers, however, are just a big punching bag. The gentleman, Falcon’s 3 hit neutral A combo is very good against bowser, except when bowser has super armor, so if he looks like he’s crouching, you should back off. Don’t roll away every time, because if you do anything too consistently with captain falcon, you’re going to get punished.
Bowser’s down tilt, side tilt, and neutral a jab combo come out really fast, and can sometimes win the priority/timing fight with captain falcon’s gentleman
You also want to watch yourself if he’s ever got one stock up on you and you’re on your last stock, because any decent bowser player is going to look for an opening for flying slam (bowser’s side b where he flips you up and usually throws both of you off the stage into death). Bowser kills himself first, but it doesn't matter if he's got one more than you. Sometimes he'll try this if you're both tied up in stock and he's got a lot more % than you.
But, if he tries it, its worth it to push yourself back towards the stage if you have less percentage, because the character with less percentage controlls the movement during this attack
Bowser will also try and fire breath you off the ledge, the best response to this is usually to spam up b, because you can’t grab the ledge while its covered in fire, and yeah, you’re going to take more damage from hitting that fire over and over, but it’s better than dying. Just spam up b until the fire breath runs out, and use your judgement to either land behind bowser, or attack him from above. If you attack him from above, Dair is going to do some damage, but it’ll usually leave open if you miss the attack and land on the ground too soon.
Bowser’s best move is probably his Fair. It comes out really fast, it does a lot of damage and knocks you back really far, and its hard to punish for most characters. The best way to deal with this move is to rush in, get close to bowser to try and bait him out into using it, then DI back towards bowser and hit him either with a sweet knee or a uair, or something else depending on the situation.
Bowser Jr.
Bowser Jr is my secondary. Bowser jr's main advantage over c fal is his litany of projectiles. You can pick up the toy koopa (bowser jr's down b, the little wind up toy that explodes if it hits you). Don't forget that bowser jr can pick up and throw it at you, and you can pick up and throw it at him. Understanding this is the key to the bowser jr matchup because it's bowser jr's best spacing tool, and he can use it to trap you in a lot of unfavorable situations then punish you. Watch out for bowser jr when he's out of the klown car because his hammer attack has a lot knockback and can easily kill you at about 140-150 percent. Bowser jr can also kill you with his uair hammer attack, so watch yourself when he's underneath you. He'll probably play a mixture of really aggressive then hold back a lot, trying to goad you into attacking when you shouldn't.
Captain falcon:
Captain falcon is fast. He's the 3rd fastest character in the game, behind Sonic and Shulk's speed monado. Your ground game, most importantly the gentleman, is half of what you need to beat captain falcon. Captain falcon will spend a lot of time fighting in the air, so thats probably what you should be focusing on. The best ways for one falcon to gimp another (Kill him as he's coming back on the stage) are to running jump off the stage as he's approaching the ledge, and Down Air spike him. If captain falcon's 2nd jump doesn't snap him to the ledge, or get him back onto the stage outright, then he's going to be forced to use falcon dive (Up B). The key to killing him in this situation is to read before he uses his 2nd jump if that jump will make it back to the stage or the ledge.
Because of this, you need to run to the edge of the stage, jump up, and hit them with the Dair before their up b animation starts, or to hit him during the animation, but without getting caught in the hitbox of his up b grabbing animation, which is difficult, but possible.
The following situation assumes your opponent is off stage right, and you're on stage left:
Try to aim your boot centered over captain falcon's head and slightly to the right. Only go juuust to the right of the center, so that you'll avoid his grab animation, but don't go too far right because this will send him up and left, which will probably just save him.
Obviously you can't follow what I'm about to say all the time because that would make you predictable and get you killed. Other times when you can't do this, you should be trying to stand on the very edge of the stage, waiting for captain falcon to get close to the ledge.
Picture the following for uptilt: Captain falcon is facing right. His uptilt covers a 180 degree radius, let's call the top of CFal's head 0 degrees, and the bottom of his feet 180. If you hit your opponent while they're in the air at any point during this half circle, they'll be shot down with what's known as a "meteor effect". This is when a character is shot down, and at about 50% it becomes deadly with most characters. Anything past 70% it's pretty safe to say most of the time that they're automatically dead, except maybe the villager.
Honestly Genteleman, Dair, Uptilt spike, and knee are your most useful Captain Killing moves. The rest of his moves (When combined with the combo: running A, uptilt, uptilt) are basically just mixups that you'll have to use so you don't become predictable.
